January 10, 2006

By Staff

Let's say you're a small business owner, which almost by definition means you're a mobile worker. You've got VOIP service at your small office or home office, but many of your calls are by necessity taken while you're in transit, or at the airport, or at your local coffeeshop. It'd be great to be able to use your VOIP service there, too, and save those cellphone minutes -- right?

That's the general idea behind the new portable WiFi handset from Vonage Holdings Corp., manufactured by UTStarcom Inc. and called the F1000. Unfortunately, the new WiFi phone, which will work at public WiFi hotspots and retails for $129.99 ($79.99 with an instant $50 rebate), is directed almost exclusively at the consumer market, at least for now.

January 12, 2006

By Shawn Young

A slew of new phones are heading to stores aimed at the millions of people who might like to try Internet calling but are put off by the prospect of sitting at a computer to make calls or hooking a phone to an adapter.

Some of the new phones from makers like Panasonic, Motorola Inc. and Uniden America Corp. have built-in adapters and are preset to connect to popular Internet-calling services like Vonage and Skype. They communicate cordlessly with a base station that's plugged into a computer or modem. Other devices will be able to shuttle automatically between operating as cellphones, cordless home phones or phones capable of working over the wireless Internet connections at many coffee shops and hotels.

January 9, 2006

By Julian Watson

VoIP has now gone beyond the early adopter phase to reach the mass market, says Vonage chief executive Jeffrey Citron.

Global Insight Perspective

Significance: There are now more than 4 million Voice over Broad Band (VoBB) subscribers in the United States.

Implications: Vonage is confident that it can continue to achieve rapid growth in a competitive market: the company has recently raised capital to fund further expansion.

Outlook: Nevertheless, Vonage's threat could make it a takeover target.

January 5, 2006

By Tim McElligott

Although not a well-guarded secret, Vonage formally revealed its use of Sonus Networks' switching platform this week and said it will be expanding the relationship to accommodate growth in its business.

Vonage has Sonus' GSX9000 switching platform, PSX Call Routing Server, SGX Signaling Gateway, and Sonus Insight Management System deployed in its New York and Los Angeles data centers.

January 10, 2006

By Staff

We told you about this back in May, but now it's become reality. Leading VoIP company Vonage will be launching their Wi-Fi phone in the UK. The device will enable broadband telephone calls over home and office wireless networks.

It is designed for use on open wireless networks, though secured home and office networks can be easily set up to recognise automatically when the device is in range. The big selling point is the ease of use - no other equipment is necessary and the phone contains all the software needed for connecting calls over broadband. Turning an internet phone into a cordless phone has got to be a good move commercially.

January 4, 2006

By Staff

Vonage Marketing, a subsidiary of Vonage Holdings Corp., a leading broadband phone company and D-Link, the end-to-end networking solutions provider for consumers and business, today announced an alliance to develop a co-branded broadband telephone adaptor configured with Vonage's phone service.

The Vonage-enabled D-Link VTA is a small, fully portable stand alone adapter supporting two broadband telephone lines. The D-Link Vonage co-branded VoIP gateway enables consumers to benefit from high quality voice applications that are compatible with Vonage's service.

In the news, we'll read about what the chairman of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission has to say about any high-speed Internet service providers that are thinking about blocking access to Vonage service. We'll also read that one high-ranking Vonage exec is looking forward to technology that might replace your current cellphone. We'll also tell you how popular Vonage's booth was at the Consumer Electronics Show, which has just ended. Because so many bloggers were at CES on Friday - and some needed time to absorb all they saw before they blogged about it, we are going to run our In the Blogs feature today. That's the feature where we call attention to what the bloggers we read regularly are writing about Vonage.  We'll also point you to a Vonage VoIP Forum thread with a question about router setup.

We’ll read about what Vonage’s CEO thinks about all this talk on the part of some traditional phone company broadband Internet Service Providers who want to charge Vonage access fees. We’ll tell you how some pretty knowledgeable tech folks are literally lining up to try Vonage’s service. Then, we’ll discuss an interesting, detailed Vonage Forum thread about some problems one Forum Member has been having logging into his Virtual Private Network (VPN) since he’s been using Vonage.